Warning: Wowhead Search Results Maliciously Targeted by WoW Eden

Over the past few months, Wowhead has been the target of a malicious campaign by the WoW Eden domain. As WoW Eden's actions present Wowhead in an inaccurate poor light, we have been taking steps to escalate this issue to the appropriate representatives, and wanted to inform our users of the situation in this post.\r\rTLDR: When searching for results on Wowhead via Google, WoW Eden took over the result and used it to redirect you to other sites. As of 3 pm March 2nd this is now fixed and WoW Eden is gone, but Wowhead's search results are also gone - working on fix. WoW Eden is still maliciously affecting results in Bing and DuckDuckGo.\r\rWoW Eden has set up a spider bot that hijacks Wowhead's SEO listings. Whenever Google parses WoW Eden, the results look exactly like Wowhead - which confuses search listings. But when a User Agent like Chrome or Firefox hits WoW Eden, it 302s and redirects to a random site. To clarify, Wowhead is not compromised and the actual site is safe to use. The search results are tampered with and what this post is about.\r\rThe end result is that when you search for something, the Wowhead search result - whether it be #1, #10, or #20 in Google rankings - has been replaced by a WoW Eden result. While this does not affect all Wowhead listings, it affects a sizable-enough amount that warrants us making a post about the issue. These results have the same titles and descriptions as Wowhead articles, including mentioning "Wowhead" on most database results, so at a glance it looks like the regular Wowhead page. The actual Wowhead link is gone from search listings - totally gone, not ranked lower. \r\rHowever, when you click on the link, it doesn't take you to Wowhead. Your browser runs through many referrals to obfuscate the process, and then you end up on a random site that's part of WoW Eden's referral network. It could be something innocuous-looking like Amazon or malicious like porn sites. We're sure this has confused users over the past few months into thinking Wowhead has been hijacked by a malicious ad and taken to a random domain. Again, this is not something Wowhead can control, WoW Eden is an unaffiliated site.\r\r\r\rAt this point we have reached out to several representatives at Google and Go Daddy, filed reports, and taken other steps. As you can imagine, these companies get many reports to sift through, and it's a slower process than we'd like. In the meantime, we're continuing to put out our content and tools, but it's quite upsetting to feel like our work is being erased on Google, especially when we're in the middle of a PTR cycle and being the first to break lots of interesting news.\r\rOne way you can still find Wowhead in search results is to type what you are looking for and then the search term site:wowhead.com or add +wowhead after your search term. Alternatively, on Chrome, you can download the Personal Blocklist (by Google) browser extension which allows you to hide any search results by a specific domain. \r\r\r\rThanks again for your continued support. We hope Google or Go Daddy can resolve the issue soon.\r\rEdit: it looks like WoW Eden is being removed from search results. Unfortunately for us, the Wowhead listing has not been restored as part of this process. We are trying to resubmit the site map and take other measures to restore our search results - this is still a bad situation for us. Edit - 6am March 3rd - we have found some, but not all, of our affected search results restored. Still working on a fix.

Comentarios

Comentario de Pedr0Bear8

on 2017-03-01T21:31:28-06:00

Thanks for the info, using -wowhead from now on.

EDIT: Readed wrong, english not my primary language, using +wowhead

Comentario de ShadoTien

on 2017-03-01T21:35:28-06:00

That is one of the most horrendous and disgusting things I could imagine being done to you! Dear Metzen! \u00b0_\u00b0 Best of luck with your reports at GoDaddy and Google, from a regular user of your site and database! <3

Comentario de Sturmgeschut

on 2017-03-01T21:38:07-06:00

Do you get redirected to sites with less malware than wowhead?

Comentario de voivod336

on 2017-03-01T21:45:03-06:00

Good point too, I run ABP (Ad Block Plus) on Firefox because wowhead.com keeps having FAKE ads trying to update your flash player, etc. I sent them MULTIPLE messages about it. So now I see no ads just a crybaby message "Wowhead is supported primarily by adventisements. Please whitelist us so we can continue to build new features. You'll thank us later. :)"

Works for me. Plus ALOT of the ads were stupid auto-playing videos that were annoying.

Comentario de ajc291

on 2017-03-01T21:51:39-06:00

"-wowhead" removes wowhead for being searchedthe - is what negates wowhead from being searched

If you are using google use site:wowhead.com rather than -wowhead

Comentario de sinangelus

on 2017-03-01T21:54:25-06:00

But if I use search from wowhead front page instead of google front page can I still get hijacked or is it safe to seach from wowhead window? I always start my day from opening wowhead and mmo-champion to see the newest info about WOW. Don't want to end up with malware or something equally bad.

P.S. Not accusing you, I mean the "fake" website that steals the search results.

Comentario de Killsomethin

on 2017-03-01T21:55:14-06:00

so when people have been saying there is an was mal ware on ur site an both u an panser said no , after months u come clean now? what gives?

Comentario de lovelywaz

on 2017-03-01T21:57:56-06:00

I am always mad at people who do all this malicious stuff to make some $$$ instead of getting a real job and using their minds for something good.\r\rBut\r\rIn a way, its good to see that wowhead has made it big enough for being the target of these lowlife scums.\r\rLight speed you, wowhead!

Comentario de lovelywaz

on 2017-03-01T22:00:20-06:00

so when people have been saying there is an was mal ware on ur site an both u an panser said no , after months u come clean now? what gives?\r\rRead your own post again maybe...\rThere is NO malware "here" on this website. Nothing to do with coming clean now when they never lied to begin with.

Comentario de Colthas

on 2017-03-01T22:00:23-06:00

Good point too, I run ABP (Ad Block Plus) on Firefox because wowhead.com keeps having FAKE ads trying to update your flash player, etc. I sent them MULTIPLE messages about it. \r\rSo now I see no ads just a crybaby message "Wowhead is supported primarily by adventisements. Please whitelist us so we can continue to build new features. You'll thank us later. :)"\r\rWorks for me. Plus ALOT of the ads were stupid auto-playing videos that were annoying.\r\rI used Wowhead like that for years but like 4 months ago I decided to subscribe. The reason is these guys always put quality content here for many years that answer most of your questions about WoW or the community does under comments but they brought these players under a quality platform like this. And tbh this site copying stuff is disgusting that they just copy years of work and ruin your SEO, if this was my website I would be very very very pissed.\r\rI think it's time wowhead community shows their support to the site and subscribe, I can understand people that are still new to the site but c'mon guys most of us are using this site to get all information we need for 5+ years already and sub fee is like nothing. Keep AdBlock it's very useful in general but this site `deserves` our support.

Comentario de Trelani10

on 2017-03-01T22:00:39-06:00

This is why I'm glad I use my anti-virus search tool to search the web. It weeds out malicious websites and search bots like this and ensures the any link I click on is tested and safe. I urge others to take the same steps so they don't fall for this trap. \r\rGood on the WoWhead team for spotting this and best of luck at stopping them.

Comentario de solitha

on 2017-03-01T22:04:16-06:00

If you have the ability (I do, in Chrome) to type the name of the website and then tab to search it specifically, you can bypass this hazard. I don't know how the various browsers work though. In the meantime, good luck Perculia... I also submitted a report to Google.

Comentario de noelie3107

on 2017-03-01T22:06:38-06:00

someone correct me if I am wrong but I would imagine that if you are searching from wowhead on topics it would only be covering you should be ok as you are searching within the internal database that wowhead has available as if you were searching a topic using the tag site:wowhead.com

Comentario de Vederia

on 2017-03-01T22:07:51-06:00

I agree with Colthas, subbed a while back and it is worth it. This site has helped me so much over the last years, thank you for all the work that goes into creating such a huge data base!

Comentario de MMOSimca

on 2017-03-01T22:10:43-06:00

I work for a site that's sort of a competitor to Wowhead (within the realm of WoW news), but still, I wanted to post and wish you all good luck in solving this issue. The fact that something like this is even possible is actually pretty terrifying as it is substantially damaging to the targeted site, and it's the first case of it I've even seen. I really hope Google and other search providers are on top of this and help resolve it quickly.

Comentario de noelie3107

on 2017-03-01T22:10:55-06:00

I have another way of stopping these fake ads in their tracks and that everyone should just buy a sub to wowhead premium then they wont have any ads coming up, simple.

Comentario de Sas148

on 2017-03-01T22:13:29-06:00

I have another way of stopping these fake ads in their tracks and that everyone should just buy a sub to wowhead premium then they wont have any ads coming up, simple.\r\rJust to be clear, this doesn't have anything to do with ads. It's a website spoofing search results of ours by taking you to their own affiliate websites. It's not ad related; but thank you for the sentiment.

Comentario de draenen

on 2017-03-01T22:14:57-06:00

So now I see no ads just a crybaby message "Wowhead is supported primarily by adventisements."

If you don't want to see ads on Wowhead, ad free browsing is less than 10 bucks a year.

Comentario de Mightylorddk

on 2017-03-01T22:26:36-06:00

Never had such problem here, all the best to you from this stupid site.

Comentario de calicos

on 2017-03-01T22:35:59-06:00

Does their hijack only apply to browser searches in general, like just googling something, or does it affect searches from within Wowhead as well...?